As a former television Program Director, I am appalled by
station receptivity to the sheer volume of advertising over the public
airwaves. Never mind content or the creative - standards are a mess there,
too - but we'll leave that for another column. My missive today begs the
question, "Holy ring-around-the-collar, Batman, is anyone watching the
store?" Put another way, who's guarding the air? Who's hawking the Sales
team? Who's thinking about the viewer...the General Manager? Yeah, right!

As the budget-conscious 90's approached, many TV stations trimmed
their Program Departments by eliminating Program Directors. Surviving
PD's were forced to find new roles in station ops or re-purpose careers
in other places. What didn't reconcile then any more than it does now was
the role the PD played in safeguarding on-air discipline. It was the PD
as Lone Ranger when the Sales Department tried every trick imaginable to
increase the commercial traffic within programs and station breaks. Their
second cousin's, the Promotion Department, sought ever-more time for
their promos. And News - voracious for station time anywhere, anyway,
anyhow - were complicit in most scenarios; after all, the revenue to
support or expand news was inextricably linked to more ads and more
promos. And GM's, most who earn their posts navigating the dark, turgid
passages of the Sales trenches, can always be expected to (eventually)
cave to any formula where more ads = more revenue.

Historically, some station groups had corporate heads that held fast
to sound programming practices and assisted the PD's in their cause for
"clean air." I was one so fortunate, teeth cut on programming customs
forged by one of the pioneers of the NATPE. I assure you the NATPE that
is breaking apart today holds less and less resemblance to the NATPE he
helped found and the meetings of the 70's and 80's I attended. There we
made time for standards and practices and other reviews that made our
air look as good as it possibly could. Amid the wheeling and dealing
of program distribution and syndication, network meetings and rep/ad
agency presentations, I wonder how much time is allotted to standards
and practices today...I wonder?

September 11th on top of an already soft economy has impacted most
every facet of life and advertising is no different. Estimates of
hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue are mind-boggling. I
guess that's why AMC now interrupts movies for commercial fare. The
Today Show and GMA have perfected moving product - cassettes, books,
movies - and are essentially live daytime infomercials. PBS's on-air
recognition of corporate sponsorship inches ever closer to commercial
smarminess. Rush Limbaugh's radio show starts later and ends earlier
as breaks are expanded. Banner ads blink, beep and move across the
screen to the point of distraction. Pop-ups are surely one of the
more insidious forms of guerilla marketing ever foisted upon the
eyeball. Advertising in the classroom is now as commonplace as chalk
and erasers. Digital time manipulation allows for compressing sequential
frames of programs like live sports, enabling yet another: 30 second spot
to be shoehorned-in. Radio employs similar technology to squeeze speech
called a "cash box". Get it? TV Guide and Readers Digest expand the use of
cardboard pages that are undersized or whose sheer thickness flop open to
- you guessed it - ads. (The first thing a friend of mine does with these
pubs is rip the cardboard out; if Madison Avenue counts that as eyeball
time, so be it.) "Popsicle signs" during political campaigns that sprout
like dandelions on every spare foot of public land blight neighborhoods
and traffic routes everywhere. Even direct mail to the house wrapped in
envelopes suggesting "Important Documents Enclosed" and "Dated Material"
have gotten into the action. I learned long ago that "Open Immediately"
usually means just another Master Card solicitation. And have you ever
tried to count the number of things on the screen during CNN Headline
News? It's laughable! While not pure advertising per se, I submit
the carefully orchestrated graphics surrounding a squished anchor
only serves to blur the line between news and exploitation. How does
one square this cluttered mess with the simplistic, highly effective,
mesmerizing use of a hand-held erasable tablet employed by Tim Russert
on election night 2000? You can't. No ifs, ands or buts, the once-noble
trade of advertising has gone whack. Gonzo. Out to lunch.

Try and avoid it? Hah! When was the last time you saw an unpainted
blimp? Stadiums and other venues are no longer named for cities or
significant geography or accomplished athletes and individuals -
rather for dot.com's and other acronyms that are as warm and fuzzy as
dry ice. There are bottles of New Orleans Saints' hot sauce, Washington
Redskin fishing tackle and Baltimore Raven contact lenses. Advertising is
imbedded in the ice of hockey arenas, on the helmets of football players,
on the jerseys of basketball teams, and through the magic of electronics,
"virtually" on the walls and padding behind home plate!

For my part, I have become an expert at intuitively knowing precisely
how long a commercial break lasts within the standard Everybody Loves
Raymond or Philly. I amaze my wife at the ability to nail when 2 minutes
or 2&1/2 minutes or 3 minutes passes and we can return to our show,
sponsors be damned! My car radio never - let me repeat that - NEVER
plays a commercial! I have 20 pre-sets on the radio and a half-cocked
cassette within a nanosecond of commercial inventory. I own 3 VCR's for
3 television sets with the "fast forward" button well worn on all. And I
nearly swell with pride over the remote control prowess of my children;
commercial pods don't have a chance! I shudder to think what they could
do with PVR's like ReplayTV or TIVO!

It is not my intention to be invective in all this but c'mon, Madison
Avenue, in your heart you know I'm right. I fully understand and embrace
the need for ad-supported commercial television. But the mind-numbing
glut of commercials, ever expanding, is killing the goose that laid the
golden broadcast egg! In the rush to secure eyeballs, consider the crush
of skulls exacted, too. I'm very close to the production community today
and all their efforts for superior creative are withered by the sheer
constancy of ad on top of ad on top of ad on top of ad (on top of ad,
on top of...) Who can watch a commercial, learn or be intrigued by the
product and be compelled to action when the brain is so dulled into
commercial overload that the only result is that soft din of revulsion?
It's palpable! And if something doesn't change, and change soon, the
advertiser will eventually dominate the list of most-annoying Americans,
bested only by guests' of Jenny Jones and telemarketers who call at
dinnertime.

My petulance has been focused largely on TV. But I could easily
place the internet in my crosshairs, or newspapers, magazines and
billboards. None of which pleases me, by the way, for I use all public
media as much as the next guy - for entertainment, information and
employment. My fear is that calls like mine will fall on deaf ears and the
self-governing initiative that could halt this insanity won't occur until
the cold stare of the FCC forces the issue. That would be regrettable.

Dare I suggest a return to the days of the NAB Code? Back to the time
when a "man in white" was actually a doctor and not an actor, when a
siren's wail was reserved for real emergencies, when only one car ad ran
per-pod, when 9&1/2 minutes of non-program content in prime time meant
just that - and no more, when program credits couldn't be squeezed and
rolled at warp speed so as to cram more promos or VO's, when commercials
had to play at the same volume as the shows they were in, etc.

For you PD's still plying your wares in the commercial TV business,
you have to be asking yourself as ratings dip and your share of market
erodes to alternative media, could it be the rank miasma of too damned
many commercials? C'mon folks, the clutter has got to stop!

The above editorial was written by Ed Fulginiti
(YourVideoLink.com)
and published in the December 31, 2001, issue of Electronic Media.
Used by permission.